Increasing the Persuasiveness of Fear Appeals: The Effect of Arousal and Elaboration

Punam Anand Keller and Lauren Goldberg Block

Journal of Consumer Research, 1996, vol. 22, issue 4, 448-59

Abstract: We investigate the conditions under which messages that prompt low and high levels of fear are likely to be effective. Our premise is that when a low level of fear is ineffective, it is because there is insufficient elaboration of the harmful consequences of engaging in the destructive behavior. By contrast, when appeals arousing high levels of fear are ineffective, it is because too much elaboration on the harmful consequences interferes with processing of the recommended change in behavior. We find support for these expectations in the context of a communication advocating that people stop smoking. The elaboration-enhancing interventions used, self-reference and imagery processing, increased the persuasiveness of a low-fear appeal by prompting elaboration on the harmful consequences of smoking, whereas the use of two elaboration-suppressing interventions, reference to others and objective processing, increased the persuasiveness of a high-fear appeal by decreasing the extent to which consumers deny harmful consequences. Copyright 1996 by the University of Chicago.

Date: 1996
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (17)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/209461 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:jconrs:v:22:y:1996:i:4:p:448-59

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Consumer Research is currently edited by Bernd Schmitt, June Cotte, Markus Giesler, Andrew Stephen and Stacy Wood

More articles in Journal of Consumer Research from Journal of Consumer Research Inc.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().